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Help Me, I've been ma'am-ed


Aeriel

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I was talking about this with someone that I knw, and she told me that her granddaughter is teahing her children to say ma'am or sir when they meet adults. So it goes on to the next generation!

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she told me that her granddaughter is teahing her children to say ma'am or sir when they meet adults. So it goes on to the next generation!

Isn't that a standard form of instilling respect for elders? Or has the whole sir/madam thing suddenly become disrespectful? I was talking to some older people (Great Depression Era) when the subject came up, and they said when they were kids, they'd get smacked by somebody if they didn't cough up a sir or ma'am after some way of talking to an adult. Maybe it still depends on geography (Deep South), but different generations have different social development patterns, I suppose.

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Even now, I would never dream of calling my mother anyhting other than 'mum' yet some children today are allowed to call their parents by their first names.

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I work at the college I got my degree from and I have a hard time calling some of the professors by their first names :shock:

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I work at the college I got my degree from and I have a hard time calling some of the professors by their first names :shock:

That was a bit hard for me in my 7 habits workshop, though i was still earning the degree and I had taken to classes with Dr.?, Hmm, funny, I can remember his first name and not his last.

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I work at the college I got my degree from and I have a hard time calling some of the professors by their first names :shock:

Neighbours and people at mum's church, too! Once I became an adult I was invited/expected to call them by their first names. I can't do that. They're still Mrs. and Mr. to me. It was REALLY hard when I got a voluntary job and my supervisor was my friend's mum who was ALWAYS Mrs. and I'm expected to call her Anne. I couldn't do it.

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  • 1 month later...
UnicornLady

I've never really heard "Ma'am" used here outside hyperformal circles I'm never in (like with the Queen!)... I'm fine with Ms, but I prefer Dr: that damn PhD took 7 years of my life without getting me a job at the end of it, so I might as well get use of the title! In France, I get "Madame" - perceived maturity, and it has a nice dignity to it ("My lady"!); in Italy, "Dottoressa".

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my friend and i were having dinner the other night and had a very polite waiter. when asking if she wanted more water, he called her ma'am, and she looked at him with slight offense and said, "did you just call me 'ma'am?!'" we all had a laugh, but at 21 she said she just wasn't ready for that title. *shrug*

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